Challenging Industry Norms

Abstract

Change is a constant in the investment management profession. New regulatory regimes, changing macroeconomic conditions, and product innovation all create new opportunities and challenges. So, from time to time, it is useful to reexamine long-held notions about investors and investing to test whether widely held assumptions still hold true in new environments. The “Challenging Industry Norms” series at CFA Institute has set out to do just this kind of reexamination since its launch three years ago. For the most recent event in the Challenging Industry Norms series—which attracted 120 attendees in New York City in October—CFA Institute partnered with State Street’s Center for Applied Research to explore the themes developed in State Street’s Influential Investor report that reflect investor experiences and changing requirements and assess what factors will drive change in the profession. The report identifies three dimensions of misalignment of interests that the investment industry may be perpetuating to ill effect, including shortversus long-term time horizons, transparency of fees relative to value delivered, and knowledge gaps and related unrealistic expectations that investors may have.